


Gates of the West [Ch 2]

by SuzumePaige



Series: Gates of the West [2]
Category: In These Words - Guilt Pleasure
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 10:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21894820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuzumePaige/pseuds/SuzumePaige
Summary: David meets the Black Widow's defense lawyer and gets more than he bargained for.
Series: Gates of the West [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990570
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

GATES OF THE WEST  
Chapter 2

The cardstock was thick, creamy, and I couldn’t be sure that it was just my imagination that when I brought the business card to my nose that it smelled like money. The law firm whose name was embossed on the off-white paper in a very mature typeset was undoubtedly grandiose enough to have spent a small fortune engineering a way to lace their business cards with the scent of fiscal responsibility. 

The names _Gordon & Gray_ took up the entirety of the one side of the card, unsurprisingly-- as if employees would be allowed top-billing. Meeting the smaller-type-faced _Ari James, Attorney at Law_ was probably doomed from the start considering my pretty dim view of his employers and his profession; nothing about that was surprising. What _was_ surprising was that in the back of my gut there was an itch about this case that I couldn’t get away from, no matter how much I tried to keep in mind Lina’s advice about curiosity killing cats. If the _SF Examiner_ was to be believed and Gordon & Gray had already kept Mina Burns safely away from any kind of reasonable doubt in the death of her husband, then why did one of their lawyers need extra hands? Law firms brought on P.I.s when they needed help to find or sift through evidence. No Junior Associate needed help keeping their desk warm while police chased their tails elsewhere. 

I tossed the card onto my bed and scrubbed a hand over my face. Goddamnit. 

I hit the call button and waited for the answer while sending a silent apology to Lina; the itch just wasn’t going to let me ignore this one. A good detective always followed their gut instinct. “David Krause calling for Ari James.” There was a low hum of background noise on the other end of the line that told me Mr James kept his assistant in the cubicle pool-- or maybe he was in the cubicle pool himself and I’d gotten the receptionist. I pulled a shirt from a hanger and closed the door to my armoire with too much force. 

“Just a moment.”

Pulling the cotton over my head while I waited, I held the phone between my shoulder and ear as I pushed my arms into the sleeves. With Montoya no longer occupying my bedroom (_too fucking old for a couch, Dave, sorry_) it felt a little too quiet in the loft. I stripped the sheets from the bed while listening to elevator music. I’d heard worse.

“Detective Krause.” The voice was easy and plain, without a trace of an accent. The lack of specificity made it expensive. I guess today wasn’t the day I was going to be proven wrong about lawyers. “Glad you called. Tommy said that you might.”

“A man has to keep busy, after all.”

He chuckled. “We both know you didn’t call just because you needed a job.” 

Ari James couldn’t see it, but both of my eyebrows raised at that. It was quite a statement of fact coming from a guy who didn’t know me from Adam. I paused with a pillow in my hand. “Do we?” Memories of dealing with Paul Gregory were almost visceral, as if I could smell the ten A.M. scotch at the back of my throat. 

“I mean, Tommy. He speaks very highly of you.”

Swallowing the taste away, I resumed shaking the case free from the pillow. “I’m sure that I don’t deserve whatever he told you about me.”

“Well, he told me that you talked him out of half his money.” 

I slammed my socked foot into a bed leg and hissed a curse as my eyes watered with the pain. Sitting down on the bare mattress I chucked the empty pillow case on the dirty pile of sheets on the floor and put my hand over my eyes, fingertips digging into my temples. The phone was hot and tight against my ear as Ari James laughed down the line. Color me wrong, then. I _had_ deserved it. 

“Half is surely an overestimation,” I managed after a moment, blowing out a breath. “One-third is more realistic. Plus I got him his job, though I’m sure that accessory to gainful employment doesn’t rank very high next to personal fraud.”

“As a lawyer, I’m duty bound to tell you it doesn’t. You must have quite the silver tongue.” The laugh lingered in Ari’s voice, making me feel like I was the butt-end of a joke I hadn’t known about. I didn’t know exactly how much Thomas had told Ari about our past or our present but I wasn’t going to supply any extra information until I found out. Thomas was generally a tight-lipped kid and I’d be stupid to start spelling things out to Ari just because he’d been offered up a tidbit to make me look like I was good at my job. 

Hair fell across my eyes as I dropped my hand and stared down at the white-washed wood planks of the bedroom flooring. I curled my toes, the pain a little more distant each time I did. It would take a while to fade completely. “Might as well call me David. But I want you to know that I only use my tongue where and when I want-- and that’s generally not at the behest of lawyers.” 

Well I already knew one thing about Ari James; he laughed too much. “I think maybe in this case,” he said, “that won’t be a problem.”

“I think you underestimate how much I dislike lawyers.”

“Then I think I should take you out to lunch so that you can size me up in person instead of just assuming I’m like all the rest. I like to think of myself as a pretty likeable guy.” My lips turned down at the corners. A lawyer who didn’t want to show off the thirty-second floor corner office, huh? “My treat,” he added and I snorted. There it was. Of course-- he’d show off the platinum Amex instead. Either way I wasn’t planning on making it easy on him. 

“In that case,” I said, “I hope you like dim sum.”

Yank Sing was busy for lunch. Yank Sing was always busy.

I know that I’d said before I’d happily give up the Financial District but when I said that I hadn’t been talking about its food. There was only one other dim sum restaurant in the city limits that was as good as this one, and that one was much cheaper. No marble floors. No pristine, crisp, white tablecloths that screamed ‘single use.’ No excessively large live seafood tanks that doubled as aquariums. If I was going to bleed a lawyer, I was going to take him for every drop. The general principle of someone whose job it was to let the uber-rich get away with anything they wanted left a bad taste in my mouth The dim sum, however, would not. 

With Thomas’ predilection for being friends with the wealthy and genetically blessed, coupled with the fact of Gordon & Gray’s reputation and the sheer cheek that I’d gotten over the phone, I already knew what to expect from Ari James. I was sure that he was both young and charming, greased into his tailored suit by the generous payouts of hundreds of rich palms. His cologne would be specific but not overwhelming, the nape of his hair well above his white collar. Cufflinks were a necessity as well as an expensive and chic watch that could be spotted by someone In the Know as a Brand. Just the kind of guy that bothered me the most. 

Someone else might have argued that such things painted a picture in order to cater to a targeted crowd but I couldn’t have given a shit; all the expensive clothing in the world wouldn’t make Ari James less of a douche. My eyes drifted over the people already seated at the high-ceilinged downtown dim sum restaurant. This city had an eclectic food crowd which made for definite breaks in the normal room of dark-haired heads but every neatly-trimmed blond that fit the description of a Gordon & Gray lawyer my mind supplied was sitting across from a filled seat. I checked my watch (well-made but modest, thanks) to make sure of the time. I refused to believe that I’d gotten here ahead of him. Being ‘fashionably late’ was only for people who needed excuses.

“David?”

Shifting away from the large windows that showcased the busy financial district street, I looked back into the dinning room to find the source of the voice. Had I missed someone? I skimmed over the tables twice before a man to my left raised his hand slightly: the hair was shorter and the frame a little taller but the resemblance was striking enough to make my stupid heart clench like it had discovered certain inalienable truths to be suddenly wrong. Breathing no longer seemed to be essential. I stepped toward him and was watched by dark, almond eyes.

_Katsuya._

There was a questioning smile on those well-shaped lips that Katsuya never would have worn in a professional situation and breath weezed from my taxed lungs. I managed to take the hand offered to me; it was warm, not quite as soft as I remembered. No, not remembered. As I expected. 

“I’m Ari James,” he said. 

The lawyer. 

“Should we…” He trailed off, the smile disappearing with his voice. He stepped forward, just so. He smelled like pine. Did I even remember what Katsuya smelled like? It felt impossible that I couldn’t find the answer. My brain circled it, stuck.

“Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” I heard myself say. That was good, answering. “Fine.” It wasn’t like me to pretend but here we were and I was sitting down across from him not because I was fine, but clearly because I was a masochist. I leaned back against my chair, trying not to look exactly how I felt: as if I was sitting down across from the ghost of a man I’d once loved. Who I’d moved three-thousand miles to escape the memory of. 

… Putting it like that, though, I supposed it was probably a pretty specific look. Maybe I didn’t have to worry. I fished for small talk. 

“You’re not what I expected,” I said. Considering the private irony, I swallowed the strange urge to laugh. Now if only I could convince my heart to settle into a rhythm conducive to maintaining life.

“From the little I know of you,” Ari James, who was not Katsuya Asano, said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.” The voice was different, of course… but just like the smell of the man, I found myself fighting to remember an exact pitch or cadence to Katsuya’s voice. Ari sat and reached out for the pot already on the table to pour both of us a mug of the steaming, thin brown tea. He started with mine. “‘Not what you expected.’ Let me take a guess.” 

I nodded, because I could manage that. “Go ahead.”

He set the teapot down between us, just off to the side. “My suit’s expensive enough, but not as showy as you imagined. Maybe a lack of teal or matching patterns. Close?”

I wet my lips with the drink. I wanted him to keep talking, if only because it highlighted the man that he wasn’t-- the obvious way Ari wore his confidence on his sleeve instead of close to his vest the way Katusya had, the high tilt of the man’s chin that said he’d always been told he was right. It leveraged my sanity bit by bit. I blew across the top of the hot liquid and forced myself to consider for a moment. To see the differences instead of the similarities. _Look_ at him, damnit. 

I did. And as I did, my heart began to slow. “No cufflinks.”

He smiled; the expression was positively rakish. Ari enjoyed this. A similar banter worn with so much more ego. “I’m also not as young as I look.”

“Bragging about good genetics is definitely playing into my expectations.”

Ari’s laugh startled me. He took a drink and pulled a menu and a pen over to him and marked a few items in silence before glancing up. “Oh, and of course.” He looked around and then dropped his voice and leaned toward me over the table, “_\--I’m not white._” Like it was secret. It was all beautifully calculated and I coughed on the laugh that barked, unbidden, from my lips.

“Seems like an antiquated view to have,” I said, and Ari pointed a knowing finger in my direction before resuming his check-marks on the menu. 

“Anything you want in particular?”

The more he went on, the less the resemblance to Katsuya. Oh, it was there. The line of the chin, the shape of his nose. How he moved his hands, maybe. The fall of his hair even without the length. With glasses on they might have passed as cousins. But Ari was a different creature than my doctor, a blind man could have seen that. I should certainly be able to keep it in mind. “I was going to order chicken feet, but seeing as how you’re _not white,_ maybe I’ll save the shock factor for the next time a lawyer takes me out on a dim sum date.”

Ari looked up, a dark eyebrow raised archly. “You like chicken feet?”

The corner of my lips twitched and I told the truth. “No.”

“I’m glad,” he said, the two words soft with amusement. “I was about to tell you to forget about the job. I’m not sure that I could trust a man who enjoyed pulling the claws off boiled chicken with his teeth.” He laughed again as he sat back and offered the menu to a passing waiter. 

“But you’ll trust a guy who talked your friend out of his money?” It was like a sore tooth; it was hard to leave alone.

He smiled, the expression narrowing his eyes. “Chicken feet are truly disgusting.” He picked up his tea and I found myself sitting forward. I did want an answer to the question. I waited for it. Ari sipped and shrugged. “Tommy trusts you despite it. And that kid.” He paused. Considered. “He needed someone like you.” 

“Me.” The money had been the instigator, for sure, but what I had really leveraged was Thomas’ soul into the hands of M. It had all ended well enough but I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Or, I did, and I was still trying to come to terms. And if Thomas hadn’t told Ari the specifics of his new boss then I certainly wasn’t going to. 

“Someone to get his head out of the sand.” Ari laughed. A bamboo basket, damp from steam, was slid onto the table between us. The server, a middle-aged Auntie who thoroughly ignored the two of us staring at each other, picked up the lid and deftly cut into the middle of the buns. They smelled like heaven. Sautéed pea shoots, tofu, honeyed pork and rice followed. “Money he has in spades,” he continued, “hell, he could stand to lose some-- though to be perfectly candid I can tell you that those investments you talked him into making have already started panning out, and not to his loss.” Ari picked up his chopsticks. He took a shrimp-filled dumpling and chewed. “But I can tell you as Tommy’s friend that what he didn’t have was an anchor.”

It was a big word with a weighty implication. “And you assume that I am one?”

Pouring himself more tea, Ari didn’t even look up. “He vouched for you. Tommy never vouches for anyone.”

That answered one question, but it brought up so many more. Ari didn’t qualify the statement and I didn’t ask him so I was left wondering if Ari did or did not know that I routinely spanked Thomas until his ass and thighs were a beautiful, vibrant red. Or that I’d broken his heart. My guess was no, but we all knew what they said about assumptions.

“Do you want to know what I expected of you?” Ari asked.

“Christ, no.”

He smiled. “Good answer. It would be pretty embarrassing to explain that you’re exactly how I pictured you.”

“Says the lawyer to the detective.” One of those professions were good at uncovering facts, the other only for twisting facts to suit. It was just a little derogatory. I figured he could take it.

Ari smiled at the tofu as he reached out his chopsticks for some, piling the soft white cubes onto the edge of his plate as he said, “says the lawyer that happens to know that Tommy’s got a daddy kink.”

I realized that I’d relaxed enough to take a drink only when I nearly choked on it. As I coughed and reached for my napkin, Ari lifted his dark eyes and grinned. To that look I said, voice flat, “and here I thought he was just using me for my big dick.”

Ari laughed loudly enough to pull attention from the nearby tables and just like that I’d found my appetite had returned. Katsuya would have never done that; not for such a cheap joke. I reached out to fill my plate. 

The food was delicious. Even if I hadn’t been happy enough to kill the conversation about me being almost twice Thomas’ age, I would have sank into a quiet meditation on food anyway once I’d taken that first bite. Ari followed my lead and for a few moments we were happy enough to just eat, the only sounds our chopsticks on the plates and requests to pass this or that. Once I was full enough-- and judged the air clear enough after our getting-to-know-yous-- I relaxed back against my chair. My fingertips kept in loose contact with the warm side of my teacup. 

“So do you want to tell me why Gordon and Gray need to buy the first impression of a P.I. they’re just hiring to run up some circumstantial evidence?” 

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt the shift in Ari’s demeanor. His shoulders squared slightly and he leaned in just a little so I took a sip of tea, giving him the opportunity to speak up. When he didn’t, I sighed. “Unless there’s a reason you wanted to be out of the office because the woo’ing is of a personal nature. If that was the case, you should have told me; I would have dressed up.”

Ari’s smile was more subdued this time around but no less sharp. “Liar,” he said, sitting his chopsticks down on his plate and pushing it forward to make room for his crossed arms. 

“Cotton is versatile.”

The restaurant buzzed around us and Ari’s fingers followed the line of the rolled sleeve against his smooth forearm. “I don’t believe that Ms Burns is innocent.”

Again, Ari slipped crossways against my expectations. I took another sip as I contemplated my response to that. “Except that your opinion doesn’t matter when your firm is her representation. And they’ve already gotten her removed as a suspect.” Maybe I didn’t mean it to sound like a challenge. Maybe I did. 

“Which,” Ari said, his voice sharp, “is exactly why we’re sitting here. I’m on Ms Burn’s team and can’t personally act against her self-interest—“

“Recuse yourself from the case.”

“I would lose my job.” Beneath the thin, smooth cream of his dress shirt his shoulders moved in a shrug. “And before you lecture me on my ideals, let me remind you that you don’t know me.”

No. I reminded myself that as well. No matter what he looked like, I didn’t know Ari James. Those were lips that I had never kissed. “Fair enough.” I already knew where this was headed. I’d been there before, if from the other side. “You need someone who’s not on the police payroll.” 

Ari lifted a dark eyebrow. “Yes. I need someone who can dig where we can’t. With _discretion_,” he added. “Which Tommy assured me that you have in spades. He’s a smart guy,” I stuffed one of the shrimp rolls that had come while we had been speaking into my mouth to keep from agreeing and citing M as a reference, and he continued, “so when Tommy says he trusts you, I’m smart enough to extend the same.”

It wasn’t the first time that it had occurred to me that Thomas was too good for me. I supposed at best we were mutually beneficial. I probably owed him a blow-job, or three. Gilding the lily indeed. “It’s still a lot of power to hand over to a relative stranger, despite the word of mouth,” I said. “As you said, it’s your job on the line.”

“Better a friend of a friend who used to be a cop and openly talks about how much he hates lawyers than a total stranger who just wants a paycheck, isn’t it?” And really, I couldn’t fault the logic there. It was rather diabolical. If what he was saying was the truth then what he was counting on wasn’t that I would come over to his side but that he was already on mine. I considered Ari for a moment, quietly. How much he looked like but didn’t quite remind me of Katsuya, though the sharp intelligence in those waiting eyes was the same. 

“Haven’t you ever had a gut feeling, David?”

I took a deep breath. Gut feelings used to be my stock in trade but it had been a long time since I’d really had to bet on them. “Of course I have, I was a cop. It’s like our damn currency. I just thought that lawyers were paid to overlook theirs.” He looked at me for a quiet moment and I wondered what he was thinking. For the first time since that initial shocking impression had worn away did Ari truly did remind me of Katsuya— a perfect face, and a perfect face for hiding things behind. 

Then he grimaced and the illusion was broken. “I _like_ my job and I want to keep it. But I also want to make sure that whoever killed Josea Romero gets the rap for it.”

I shrugged. “That’s fine. But you have to tell me something.”

“How I sleep at night?”

I snorted. “If you lose sleep over second-guessing stepping outside of your daily role as a professional asshole then we have a lot left to discuss,” I said, and Ari’s frame loosened with his laugh— even though it didn’t sound too self-deprecating. I smiled. “Your number. I don’t think I should keep calling you through Gordon and Gray’s secretary.”

Ari blinked, a bite of food frozen halfway to his mouth. It settled back down to his plate and he cleared his throat. “Of course.” He patted his shirt front before seeming to realize that he wasn’t wearing his jacket and then had to turn slightly in order to pull a pen and a business card from the inner pocket of the navy seersucker. At this rate, I’d force him to restock. He scratched out dark strokes on the back of the cream rectangle.

“You’re accepting the job, then?” He lifted his eyes and the number, the card floating between two of his fingers, almost outstretched. 

I watched him instead of the paper bait. “Haven’t decided. You don’t even know my fee.”

“Whatever it might be is worth knowing that I did something.”

“At least you understand paying lip-service.” I didn’t say that I liked it, not out loud, but I reached for the card. It was handed over. “You’re almost coming across as liberal.”

“Don’t tell my mother.”

I looked at the bold slashes of pen dug into the soft, expensive paper. Ten numbers next to a full name: Arinobu. “Ari’s a nice nickname.” It was a small dig at a system that wanted to make rich synonymous with _white_. It was a small dig at Ari. I tucked the card away.

He picked his chopsticks back up and graced me with a sharp eyebrow that said he understood and wouldn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve always liked it.” He picked up a dumpling out of the basket and sat it in his chili oil before raising his eyes again to me. “Are you familiar with the case?”

“Enough of it to start, at least. Thomas said you were just assigned?”

Ari nodded and chewed the dumpling before answering further. “I’m sitting on it to make sure that everything keeps rolling, paperwork gets signed and into the right hands, that sort of thing. Now that Ms Burns has been cleared there’s not a lot to do.”

“So tell me about your gut feeling.”

For a moment Ari continued to eat, and so I did too, but he gathered his thoughts on the subject quickly and it wasn’t long before he was putting down his chopsticks and leaning back. He crossed his arms over his chest. “My firm is very good at what they do.” I opened my mouth and Ari leaned forward to add before I could speak up, “and despite whatever very nice things you no doubt have to say about it, it’s not just at covering things up.” I had to chuckle and Ari shook his head, as if I was some child who didn’t know better. I liked the look on him. “The lawyers who work for us are not just there because they’re rich; they’re there because they’re the best. We don’t take cases that are beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“You hedge your bets.”

“We are a business.”

“Ah.” There it was. “The fact that you think those things are mutually exclusive, that’s the problem.” Ari lifted a hand and gave the thought a sharp wave to the side. I was as impressed with the gesture as I was annoyed. I let him go on. 

“On paper, Ms Burns is innocent. And not only by virtue of having an alibi and a failure of evidence to link her to the scene of the crime, I mean-- she passed the polygraph. All the firm really did was expedite things and keep her reputation protected. She did the rest herself by virtue of being clean.”

“Clean,” I repeated. He hadn’t used the word innocent. 

“There’s no motive.” Ari looked agitated. His hands raised and then settled against the table. “ There’s no reason why anyone would want Josea Romero dead.”

“That’s no reason to link it to Mina.”

“Even when her first husband died too?”

I took one last piece of pork and settled my chopsticks as well. “Coincidence? Luck, or lack thereof? You can’t build a case on that. If that’s where your gut instinct is coming from then I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re wrong.” I wiped my fingers and watched Ari’s jaw tighten. “You cannot assume guilt.”

“I know that; I’m not an idiot.” He breathed out, his shoulders dropping a little. When he spoke again his voice was controlled but that snap remind in dark eyes. At that moment any similarity to Katsuya was gone. “I do believe that Peter Burns committed suicide. But I also do believe that there is something here that doesn’t add up the way it should. Like I said, on paper it’s neat. But--” he waved his hand.

“The gut instinct.” I sighed. I did understand. It wasn’t a lot to try and hang a case on, but I understood. “I can’t imagine that Gordon or Gray will be happy to find out that they’ve footed the bill to be second-guessed.”

Ari’s look was dry. “You don’t have to worry about it. You’ll be paid well and on time.”

I considered it. “What do you get out of this, Ari? Is it really just knowing you’ve done something? Because that feeling doesn’t keep the lights on, I can tell you from personal experience.”

A hand was lifted for the bill before Ari leaned forward on his elbows. “David. Unlike Tommy, I don’t need a daddy.” He smiled and I itched to wipe the expression off of his face. “An exploratory contract to start. A week with the files and a meeting I’ll set up and you can tell me if you feel the same way that I do. If you don’t you’ll get your paycheck and you can walk away.” Ari thanked the young man who came over and handed him a card pulled from his wallet. It was indeed platinum.

I had to add, “and you’ll find someone else, I assume.”

There was a small laugh. “At that point it would be none of your business.” 

I made a small sound at the back of my throat because, well, true enough. I spread my hands in a shrug and gave him the point. The thick black book with the paid receipt inside was laid on the table. I watched Arinobu James as he scribbled his name across the receipt that he’d let the company pay for despite everything, how his hair stayed neatly swept back even as his chin dipped down, the arrogant scrawl of his signature, the way his long fingers held the pen. His eyes rose and met mine. 

The bottom line was that my own curiosity about the case hadn’t gone away, but it would have been unfair not to point out to myself that the focus had certainly taken a sharp left turn. “A week,” I said. 

I could give Ari that much. 

Ari smiled.


	2. Gates of the West [Ch3]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David learns some facts about the Burns case that finally catch his attention, but are they enough to change his mind about Ari?

Standing next to my car, I hit send on my phone and pinched it against my shoulder in order to open the door and throw a folder full of photocopies from the San Francisco Vital Records office onto the passenger seat. Someone pulled up behind me and put their blinker on.

When the call was picked up, the answering voice voice was polished to a high gloss. “Ari James.”

“I need to know if you’re playing a joke on me.” I waved the other drive around; I didn’t expect this conversation to go quickly. “You can tell me the truth,” I said, folding myself behind the wheel and slamming the door “—you and Mina went to high school together, she humilated you in front of the entire school and this is revenge. Did she pull down your pants on the football field?” 

“Hello, David.” I didn’t like the way he said my name, all humor and round letters.

I looked up at my reflection in the rearview mirror as I sank back into the carseat. The man who looked back at me was familiar without a doubt; the way his hair always fell to one side, the almost imperceptible swerve to the bridge of his nose where it had been broken almost twenty years ago and then again surely at least twice-- I’d lived with that man all my life. What I didn’t understand was what I couldn’t see in those blue eyes: the reason I was restless doing the work I’d always found exciting. I grabbed the phone in one hand and turned the mirror away with the other. I was tired. I should learn to stop asking stupid questions.

“Hi, Ari.” If it was easier speaking to him over the phone, it was just a fluke. Without being able to see Ari I couldn’t mistake him for Katsuya in the slightest. His voice was deliberately accentless and sharp in a way that my ex-partner’s rarely had ever had cause to be. “Mina’s public records make girl scouts look like sadists.” So far this morning I’d managed to fill an entire manilla folder with nothing but the cleanest crap I’d even seen in my life. Mina’s records were all in order, not one parking ticket paid late. Even Mother Teresa might have missed a payment in San Francisco, where getting a parking ticket was sometimes the price you paid just to be able to park your car at all. 

The kicker was that the squeakiness of her paper trail didn’t even made me suspicious: in fact it all seemed pretty on-par for a woman who I’d found graduated with honors from her ivy league university, been the treasurer for her sorority, and helped run or fund a bevvy of charitable programs in her free time. Her life in documents was a fairy tale and I’d pulled together a casefile that read like Marsha Brady’s best hits. Good people were pushed to do bad things all of the time but if Mina was Ghandi on paper than I was going to have to hope that Ari had something else that got me on board with his gut. 

I rolled down the window and sat my elbow in the sunlight, a watery glow through the morning fog. The city offices weren’t close enough to the bay to get real sunlight before mid-afternoon this time of year. It made the breeze cool and I rubbed the tips of my fingers together; they were already damp. I wondered if Ari was in the office. “Is this a bad time?”

“Luckily for you I am out getting coffee right now.”

I put my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. “If you say you’re in a Starbucks you’re going to be down one P.I.”

“Then luckily for me, I am in a little bistro connected to an old hotel where all they serve is Illy. Do I pass muster?” There was a tease that lifted the ends of his words and stood the hair on the back of my neck. I liked the lack of incongruity in the thought of him in a three-piece suit at a small chrome counter more Italian than American in a low-ceilinged, wallpapered old hotel with sconces on the walls. 

I opened my eyes. “It’ll do.”

“Then please, continue.” 

I wish I couldn’t hear the smile in his voice. “I’m not sure where this gut instinct of yours comes from--”

“I think you get enjoyment from pointing that out.”

“--but I can tell you without a doubt that you will never be able to level a charge against Ms. Mina-who-actually-offered-bone-marrow-to-a-friend-Burns for killing not just one but two of her husbands and make it stick.”

Ari’s chuckle was dry, cutting in like static down the line. “Do you always have such an aversion to earning a paycheck?” Little did he know how ironic that question was in light of my time in San Francisco. Why did it always have to come down to money? “I’ll pay you by the day,” he continued, “or the hour if you prefer.” 

I felt my lips flatten into a line and somethick cool and heavy settled in my stomach. “As long as you’re throwing money at the problem,” I said, “sure. Hourly sounds great. Now that we’ve got all the _most_ important things out of the way, would you like me to continue? It’s not my job on the line, after all.”

“Touchy.”

It felt like maybe he wasn’t touchy enough. “I know you’re new to the concept of a guilty charge--”

“Motives are as grey as morals,” he said. I wondered if interrupting people while they were talking was a lawyer thing. 

“That’s a good title for your first book.” The words were a quick snipe before I bit my tongue. In my ear there was a tight breath that was no doubt Ari doing the same. Goddamned criminal defense lawyers. Lifting my hand from the door I pushed fingers down against my temples and took a moment. The next words came through my clenched teeth but at least they resembled something civil. It was fine if we didn’t like each other-- in all honestly I’d been suspicious of the rapport we’d had in person over lunch-- but we needed to be civil if work was going to get done. 

“A gut instinct doesn’t need a reason, Detective, and since you seem to understand the definition of guilt so well, I think you also surely grasp the concept of burden of proof.”

I frowned at no one but my windsheild. Burden of proof was the obligation to provide evidence. In other words, exactly what Ari had hired me to do. “_Onus probandi._”

“And he’s educated as well. Astounding.”

Asshole. I kept that one to myself, at least. I mean, why bother stating the obvious?

“Do you feel up to continuing this job?”

Dropping my head back I stared at the ceiling of the sedan for a moment. Like a handful of other things, this car had been with me from from New York. There had been a day when flashers had been mounted behind the front grill in service to 1PP Homicide Department. Back then burden of proof had felt tangible-- there was always a body. Always a corpse and the people whose worlds had shifted with the loss of that heartbeat. Maybe that was the defining distinction between my life in New York and my life in San Francisco: a lack of a heartbeat. I was running errands for the rich and jilted.

Christ, I hoped this wasn’t my midlife crisis. How fucking sad. 

Without Ari’s face in front of me we’d resorted to our baser selves: a pro-bono lawyer and an old-school ex-cop. “Listen, Ari, I’m sorry.” See? I could be good. “I’d only called as a way to maybe connect some dots. It’s not every day I’m running down leads on a grieving widow who has been cleared beyond reasonable doubt. Who smells so clean that _I_ feel like I just took the best shower of my life. I’m saying this because if she’s clean on paper then there’s a lot of bullshit that I’d rather skip right through. Gut instincts aside I know what I said but,” I didn’t trust the gut instincts of a lawyer, “this feels like nothing. Less than nothing.”

There was silence and for a moment I thought that Ari had hung up. 

“I’m allowed to speak now?”

Christ. “Yes, please do.”

“What I know,” he said, while I rubbed my forehead and the headache that was suddenly looming very close, “is that every single thing about this case--her lovely paper trail notwithstanding--that’s come to light exonerates Mina Burns from guilt. And _that_ is something.”

He gave me silence to turn over his words and slowly, I sat up straighter. Out the windshield true sunlight was trying to push fingers through the morning. It wasn’t uncommon that leads went nowhere--what _was_ uncommon, however, was to find someone so close to the victim of a homicide who could walk away looking, well, like Ghandi. “You’re saying she’s too clean.”

“Any cleaner,” Ari said, “and she’d squeak when she walked.”

Which gave an entirely new context to all the pages that I’d spent the morning digging up. If anything, the fact that I’d found nothing at all exacerbated what Ari was pointing out. I had nothing to apologize for but felt chastised enough to admit that perhaps I’d spoken out of turn. “Alright,” I said, “let’s say I’m starting to understand.”

Ari’s laugh lost none of its broadness over the phone. The sound curled like a viper low in my stomach, tight, curled, ready to strike. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you, David?”

“Strangely, not who are lawyers.”

I hadn’t meant to prompt another laugh but I got one anyway. “Meet me for coffee tomorrow morning,” Ari said. “You promised me one meeting-- let’s make it my contact in the police department. One-ten Yacht Road at nine. We’ll get you a casefile that might make you inclined to be a little sweeter because god knows your good looks aren’t making your moral high-ground any more bearable.” 

Before I could even think of a response to that, Ari had hung up.

Well, shit.

\+ + +

One-ten Yacht Road turned out to be a free-standing octagonal white-stone building with a terracotta roof that was only a little larger than my bathroom. On the edge of the Marina and the water, behind the cafe a double-handful of actual yachts were bobbing on the incoming tide just over the back railing. A small green sign snapping in the breeze read ‘Dynamo Donut & Coffee.’ Donuts. I wondered if I was here because Ari had bad taste in cop jokes. Rounding the side of the small business I found both the lawyer in question and the obviously plainclothes officer next to him mid-conversation; they paused as I approached and two sets of eyes turned to me. 

Ari’s physical presence still felt like a gut-punch. The more-than presentable suit, the dark, cool set of his eyes. I’d somehow convinced myself that I’d been wrong about everything that I’d felt at lunch but standing here in front of him I considered that I’d only done myself a disservice. Doubting how I’d felt before left me staring now, my mouth dry and my heart rapping against my ribs as if it were not-so-politely asking to vacate the premise. 

“David.” Ari kept most of his teeth behind his smile and didn’t reach for my hand. I was grateful for both. The officer, however, cursed lightly and then laughed as he shuffled his donut with a crinkle of waxed paper so that he could offer a shake. Ari made the introductions. “This is Detective Blair Kaplan. Blair, Private Detective David Krause.” It took the detective’s hand in mine to redirect my focus from Ari. 

The detective’s grip was warm, easy to take and easy to let go. “Krause,” he said, smiling. He raised his donut a bit. “Molasses-Guiness flavor. I know I’m the picture of a walking stereotype right now but look, the way I see it if I set the bar low then there’s no place to go but up.” So the choice of locale hadn’t been bad humor after all. I was a little disappointed. 

Kaplan’s short hair was being tested by the wind off the bay. He didn’t have a tie and his jacket was a trench-coat that pandered as much to the tv-show detective as the donut in his hand, but his button-down fit him well and was tucked snugly into slacks that still had their crease. He would have looked well-cut if it wasn’t for Ari at his side with the wrists of his dress shirt peeking out from the cuffs of his suit jacket at just the appropriate length. “Am I late?”

Kaplan smiled, thin lips framed by a trimmed auburn beard. “No. Ari has an annoying habit of being ten minutes early everywhere he goes.” Poking fun at the lawyer; I liked the detective already. 

“Probably so that he can make everyone else look worse in comparison,” I offered in return.

“Absolutely. As if the suits didn’t do that already.”

Ari plucked a coffee cup from the railing at his side and handed it to me. “Cream and sugar are on the ledge. Let’s sit--I’ll be less likely to drown one of you if we’re further from the water.”

“He’s shitty before his caffiene’s kicked in,” Kaplan muttered around a sip of his own coffee.

Crap. I _did_ like him. But he apparently liked Ari enough to tease him, which meant either Kaplan was mentally impared or I’d let my judgements get ahead of me. Sugar was added to the black liquid and I popped the lid back on as I followed the two men down a short pier in front of the hut that ran along a thin strand of beach. The wooden planking held a small scattering of orange-topped, circular tables. There was only one other group seated, a mom swiping through her phone as her two children smeared their faces with frosting. Kaplan divested himself of coffee and donut before grabbing a tied folder from under his arm and dropping on the table as he sat. Ari and I took our own benches. 

“That’s everything that I can pull you for the case,” Kaplan said. I didn’t look at Ari. “You’ve been filled in on the problem--at this point there’s nothing, and I mean nothing, that links her to the crime.” Her being Mina; David saw the detective glance at the family and even though they were tables away, he was being safe. I wrapped my hands around the hot sides of my paper cup. 

“You share Ari’s feelings on this.”

Kaplan nodded. The smile from earlier was gone and without it the neat beard leant him an intensity. “Gordon & Gray have kept her presence in the investigation to a bare minimum--”

“It’s our job,” Ari said, his eyes narrowing. He enjoyed interrupting everyone, then. I didn’t know if I was glad it wasn’t just me.

“Ari.” Kaplan paused for effect before continuing when the lawyer held his tongue. “What I was going to say was that even if they hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten much face time anyway. G&G acted as public botox, you know what I mean?” I did. He was saying that the firm hadn’t gotten in the way so much as protected Mina’s image. They kept her from being hauled in they way I would have hauled her in--which was to say, something just short of harassment. It’s one way of breaking a suspect down, mentally; no one likes coming into a police station. “But I was there when she took the polygraph,” Kaplan said. 

“It’s not impossible to beat a polygraph,” I offered. “And they’re not admissible in court anyway.”

“There’s something missing,” Ari said, across the top of his coffee. He’d taken off the lid and the steam wafted toward his face. I tried and failed not to focus on his eyes, or his cheekbones. The morning sun did them both a lot of favors. At least Kaplan seemed oblivious to where my attention was; he was nodding his agreement. I pulled myself back. 

Kaplan shrugged. “Despite the facts, no one that close to a victim can be so clean.” He wasn’t wrong. Most of the time several suspects in a case had motives and ties to evidence that were nothing but the circumstance of life. People got dirty living in each other’s pockets. Spouses got dirtier than most. 

“It’s possible that she set it all up,” I said. “Took her time to make sure to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s. Sounds like someone who could beat a polygraph.” But it also sounded like a sociopath, and that wasn’t the woman I’d found in paper at the SF Vital Records office. That person wouldn’t pledge a sorority and donate her body parts. Kaplan wore a grim smile in the corners of his mouth that said he was thinking the same thing.

The detective had a doe-eyed look about him that reminded me of Richards, even though Kaplan had to have almost a decade on my friend. But there was that same optimism that lifted his words, turning what should have been a shut-case into a open-ended goal. “Forensics found a bullet hole in the bottom panel of the driver’s door,” Kaplan said, leaning over his coffee and lowered his voice. “Took them two days to find the bullet. Small caliber. But the vic had soot in his lungs.”

I rubbed at my cheek, some of the residual warmth of the coffee cup lingering on my skin. Ari was watching me and I tried my best to ignore him. “The shot incapacited him,” I said, “and then he died in the fire. Christ. That’s an ugly way to go.”

“And premeditated as hell,” Kaplan agreed. I couldn’t argue. Such an intimate death heavily implied that the killing wasn’t random. And he--and Ari--were convinced that it was Mina. They just didn’t have to proof to back it up.

“Do you have a detail following her?”

The wind shifted Ari’s tie. “No,” he spoke up. “G&G shut that down.” My eyebrows rose and Ari scowled. Kaplan was right--Ari _was_ cranky before his coffee.

Kaplan pushed the file toward me. “Take it home, read it. A fresh point of view can only help.” I set it under my coffee even as the younger detective blurted out, “I looked at your numbers,” like it was something that he’d been sitting on since he’d shook my hand and just couldn’t keep in any longer. Ari’s eyebrows hid themselves under his hairline. Kaplan wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at me. “Your closing rate is amazing.”

“Was,” I pointed out, careful. It technically only applied to the work that I did in New York. While private detectives did close cases, my record lately had been chekered enough that I was glad it was all far enough below bar as to be regulated to word-of-mouth. 

Kaplan shook his head. “The Carlin Brothers.”

“Who?” Ari asked.

“Serial killers,” the detective said, and I wrapped my fingers back around my cup with enough pressure to make the stiff lid creak. The scar on my forearm itched. “Krause caught them.”

“I was lucky,” I said. Also lucky that I’d lived, but I left that part out. “Right place, right time.”

“Clean-up found a dozen bodies buried in the backyard, some that had been missing for a decade.” I didn’t want to think about Jesse, or how it had felt to intentionally take a man’s life. I swallowed a mouthful of coffee and burned my tongue, wincing. At least the pain was louder than the intensity of Ari’s gaze on me. I guessed that he’d truly taken Thomas’ word for face value. He hadn’t known what he was actually getting in the deal.

“It’s not like I solve everything that comes across my desk,” I said. “No one does. This case--”

“Shit, sorry.” Kaplan shook his head. “I know, I didn’t mean to imply that you’re our golden ticket. It’s just, you know. You’re a hightide mark. If there were, like, trading cards for detectives… ah, fuck, nevermind.” He grinned, wide and white. “Sometimes the mouth goes without the brain’s consent.” There was a slight flush in his tanned cheeks. 

I exhaled through my nose, something more than resigned but less than a laugh. I took pride in my work but never wanted to be anyone’s standard. “I’ll look at the files. Can I reach out if I need anything?”

Kaplan nodded. “My card’s in the folder with the rest of it.” He hadn’t quite lost his grin and when he shook my hand again, it was a little tighter than the first time. “None of us are miracle workers, right? But it makes me feel better knowing that your eyes are on this.” He climbed to his feet and lifted the half-eaten donut and his coffee. “Sorry to eat and run, but I’m supposed to be in the office in fifteen.” He shifted his wooly smile to Ari. “Catch ya later, three-piece.”

“I hate you,” Ari said with a beautiful smile. Kaplan just gave one last wave my way before turning. His trench coat flapped behind him. For a moment there was absolute silence. It was a gorgeous morning. And then I said--

“--three-piece?”

Just a heartbeat before Ari asked--

“--trading card?”

I shook my head. “I was first.”

Ari sighed and pushed fingers through his hair, catching the nearly-blue strands and pulling them off his forehead. His hair wasn’t too short that the wind hadn’t been able to make a mess of it but the gesture hadn’t helped either; small wings stuck out around his ears. “He calls me that because of the suits.”

“_Do_ you own anything without a matching vest?” I hated the teasing way I asked it.

“Of course I do,” Ari snapped. There was something about the way his frown folded small creases between his eyebrows; it made him look more human and less like a slightly-off photocopy of my ex. He narrowed his eyes and picked up his coffee. “Did you wear your formal uniform when you posed for your trading card?” 

My teeth clicked together and I smiled. “Of course not. I just hung my hat on my dick.” 

Ari sputtered into his drink and rocked back in his seat, covering his mouth with a hand as he coughed. My smiled loosened into something wider and unintentionally genuine. “You don’t want to know where I got to stick all the medals.”

Coughs turned into laughter and my heart lurched. “Shit,” Ari breathed out, crows feet stepping out at the corners of his eyes. He rubbed his chin and returned his cup to the grossly orange table. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have brought him if I knew he was a _fan_.”

I hummed. “Why’s that?”

“Because I don’t need you being likeable.”

My heart was back suddenly, knocking on my ribs. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe Ari James didn’t want to like me any more than I wanted to like him--and if we _did_ get along… then where, exactly, did that put us?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after months of being stuck on this I ended up going back to the beginning and using (tweaking) half a chapter that was the first draft I wrote, what, last year? *sigh* Just how some things go. I guess I needed some distance.


End file.
